Issue of high-rise development is behind the dispute.

Alamo Heights resident Sarah Reveley dropped out of the race for mayor last month. This sign on her lawn explains the reasons for her action.

Photo By Courtesy Photo

Mayor Louis Cooper

Photo By Courtesy Photo

John Joseph

Photo By Courtesy Photo

Bill Kiel

Alamo Heights calls itself a city of “beauty and charm,” but those qualities do not apply to its politics these days.

On the cusp of an election for its mayor and a council member, the affluent municipality near downtown is divided by two warring factions.

One camp — led by Bill Kiel, a former councilman seeking to oust the mayor — sees a conspiracy among city officials and developers he says are angling to build high-rises that would tower over homes and suck up city resources.

The other camp, supporting Mayor Louis Cooper, considers such fears a figment of Kiel's imagination, not to mention “silly.”

And the name-calling only begins there.

“He's an idiot,” local developer George Geis says of Kiel. “I've owned property in Alamo Heights since 1974. It's never entered my mind to build a high-rise building. Never.”

Such assurances do not placate Kiel or his supporters, including resident Sarah Reveley, a former candidate for mayor who dropped out of the race last month and posted a 173-word sign on her front lawn explaining why.

Joseph created AHNA in 2007 to prevent the construction of “McMansions” in Alamo Heights. He since has wielded it and its newsletter, The Advocate, as political tools of increasing clout.

Last month, Joseph created a political committee to raise campaign funds for Cooper and Councilman Bobby Rosenthal, who is being challenged by Susan Harwell, a former councilwoman.

And he employs other tactics.

Believing the League of Women Voters had scheduled a candidate's forum on the first night of Passover, Joseph sent the group an email calling its local chapter “nothing but dimwitted, racist, Anti-Semites,” and Kiel and Reveley “Germanic extremist candidates.”

“Every single Jew and a lot of Christians in this area are very, very upset and offended,” Joseph wrote, using a pseudonym. “Why didn't they just hold this Forum at a mosque?”

Joseph later learned a Kiel supporter had scheduled the forum, not the league.

The message has riled his foes.

“To me, that was an evil email,” Reveley said.

Joseph acknowledged sending the message and is not apologetic.

“I have never been subtle,” he said.

Failed measures

By most accounts, Joseph's outspokenness kindled a rivalry with Kiel about two years ago, which sparked the war in Alamo Heights.

Living in a pink bungalow a few lots off the main business corridor, Kiel has worried for years that high-rises would corrode the city's charm.

He says he ran on the issue in 2006, when he was elected councilman.

In 2007, Kiel proposed a rare charter amendment that would have required a citywide vote for any developer to build a structure higher than 55 feet.

Facing opposition, however, Proposition III was scrapped.

Two years later, Kiel — along with the mayor — supported a $10.3 million bond to build a new City Hall and police and fire stations. Joseph opposed spending the money and printed a column against the bond in his newsletter.

He also sued the city and wrote a request in a local newspaper for donations to oppose the initiative.

The latter prompted Kiel to file a complaint with the Texas Ethics Commission alleging Joseph had not formed a political committee before requesting the donations. Kiel also resigned from the City Council.

Joseph says he “made my mistake” asking for the money and formed a political committee soon after.

Voters that year overwhelmingly rejected the bond, marking a victory for AHNA. And the ethics commission last month decided not to penalize Joseph, instead warning him to comply with the law.

But egos remain sore, and Alamo Heights is living with the pain.

'Inside players'

Kiel this year persuaded 550 voters to sign a petition forcing Proposition III onto the ballot.

The measure this time would restrict the height of buildings to 40 feet unless voters allow case-by-case exceptions. Although commercial structures in Alamo Heights already are limited to 40 feet, a majority of the City Council can grant developers a special-use permit to build to unlimited heights.

Joseph and Cooper oppose Kiel's initiative, saying the council's vote is enough to stop unwanted high-rises. The burden of holding public elections for even slight deviations, they say, would scare off needed development.

“We have a deteriorating downtown already,” Cooper said.

But Kiel warns that those in power are secretly aligned with developers, who want high-rises.

“This is really about money and the desire of a few individuals to have power,” he said.

As proof, he cites the mayor's appearance this year at two private AHNA meetings on the second floor of H-E-B Central Market, where Cooper delivered a “state of the city” address, and on another occasion presented a “key to the city” to U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio.

Cooper says he simply was meeting with residents, not conducting city business.

Fernando Centeno, who resigned as president of AHNA last month, is troubled by the way it operates.

“We're supposed to be a watchdog organization, not inside players,” he said, adding that Joseph still controls the association. “We have not had an open discussion about these issues. We have too many behind-the-scenes machinations.”

But a chorus of city officials and developers insists the fear of future high-rises is a straw man — a fabrication to further Kiel's political ambitions.

“Not one person on council is for high-rises in Alamo Heights,” Cooper said. “I just get tired of the BS. I just don't see the need and urgency to divide the community on an issue like this.”